Donald Trump’s resounding victory over Kamala Harris was historically consequential: it was the first time a Republican presidential candidate carried both the electoral college and popular vote in twenty years.  More than that, however, was the lasting, even generational, impact it will have on our politics for decades to come.  If Donald Trump, who had been target number one of weaponized lawfare like nothing seen in our history, had not won this race, America as we know it would have been destroyed for good.  Now there is at least a chance for restoration — if not a new golden age.

The restoration must begin with rigorous election integrity laws.  President Trump’s popular vote win affords him with a mandate that he did not have (at least officially) in his first term.  The feat is made even more impressive by the certainty that fraud and corruption still impacted the results of this race.  The idea that the President had to win over and above what should be the normal threshold to victory – hence, this year’s mantra, “too big to rig” – must be considered unacceptable moving forward.  It should be a top priority for any first world country, especially the United States, to have confidence in its election procedures.  It is inexcusable that in a democratic society, the people would even harbor the slightest doubt about the integrity of their election laws – and the legitimacy of the outcome. 

Alas, the way America runs its elections has become a joke around the world.  The fact that we do not have a national standard to check for citizenship in the form of voter ID is a disgrace and embarrassment.  As many commentators, including Elon Musk, have noted on X and elsewhere, it’s striking that every state without voter ID laws voted for Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, this cycle.  Among other things, Democrats have long opposed voter ID laws for winning elections; in a few cases, they have even advocated for permitting illegal aliens and other undocumented persons to vote in local and state elections. 

It is a certainty that had Kamala Harris won, the Democratic Party at a national level would have advocated for a nationwide ban on voter ID, probably calling the measure invidious discrimination (even though it really just discriminates against American citizens, including legions of black, Latino, and women voters), as well as called for illegal aliens to vote in every case.  As it stands, the U.S. Census – which determines the distribution of electoral college votes by state – already includes illegal aliens in its count of state residents.  In a state like California, for example, which has at least three million unlawful aliens domiciled within its borders, that adds at least three million additional residents to its overall population.  As a basis of comparison, Arkansas, which boasts 6 electoral votes, has about 3 million residents overall.  Therefore, 3 million illegal aliens equate to roughly 6 extra electoral votes for a state like California. 

If illegal aliens were not included in California’s electoral college total (as should be the case), it would receive just 48 electoral votes, not the 54 electoral votes it currently has.  Donald Trump thus loses electoral votes because of the disproportionate number assigned to states like California – and other blue juggernauts like New York and Illinois. These are states which are home to unconstitutional sanctuary cities, whose electoral vote numbers are likewise doubtlessly inflated by the numbers of illegal aliens residing within their borders. 

One would think with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, which all but mooted the “Three-Fifths compromise,” an invidious clause found in the text of the original Constitution which boosted the South’s electoral power by incorporating three-fifths of every non-citizen slave as part of the U.S. Census, that counting non-citizens in the U.S. Census would be universally verboten.  Yet here we are.  The same principle that animated the Three-Fifths Compromise now informs the drive to include non-citizens and illegal aliens in the U.S. Census.  Like their Confederate forbears, latter-day Democrats want to increase their electoral power – both in terms of their share of the electoral college and for congressional districts – but they are also unwilling to publicly advocate for illegal aliens (at least this juncture) to be allowed to vote.  The latter point really brings out the duplicity from their disingenuity.

The reason Democrats cannot possibly advocate for illegal aliens voters needn’t be spelled out: as a matter of policy, illegal alien voting is widely, unpopular. The overwhelming majority of Americans want the franchise to be limited to U.S. citizens only – which is perfectly rational: one of the privileges of citizenship after all – and not just in the United States, but everywhere — is the right to vote.  It is a right Americans view — rightly — as sacred. If the franchise was open to everyone, illegal alien and citizen alike, it would lose its special meaning.  What is more, American citizens would abdicate the cornerstone of their identity as a liberty-loving people – and the country, opening its doors to the world, would effectively cease to exist.

And so, Democrats are forced to pretend – in public, at least – that they oppose giving voting rights to illegal aliens.  At the same time, they rely on duplicitous back-door schemes, like including illegal aliens in the U.S. Census, which affects electoral college numbers – and pretending that illegal aliens do not appear on voting rolls – even though overwhelming evidence proves they do – every single election.  It is quite evident based on the still-ongoing, weeks-long process to tabulate votes, particularly in California, Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York, over which time a number of key Senate races have swung to Democratic favor, even though for a while it looked as though the Republican had won fair and square, that electoral shenanigans are afoot. 

The shocking revelations out of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, tells the whole story: Democratic election workers continue to count illegitimate votes – in defiance of a Pennsylvania Supreme court order!, which threatens to flip that county – which voted for Donald Trump – to Kamala Harris’ corner.  The Bucks County scandal is indicative of a broader nationwide strategy by Democrats on display in the two weeks since Election Day: displeased with their landslide blowout, they are working vigilantly to erode Donald Trump’s popular vote margin and flip a few Senate seats that went for Republicans to Democrats.  In Pennsylvania, Democrats are working overtime to claw back David McCormick’s victory and keep that Senate seat firmly in Democratic hands as a way to exact vengeance on Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania voters. 

Democrats were likely successful in cheating other senators, from Sam Brown in Nevada to Kari Lake in Arizona to Eric Hovde in Wisconsin, of victories that would have padded the Republican majority in the Senate.  Each of these Republican senatorial candidates were leading (or came within the margin of victory) on election night only to see their leads mysteriously vanish in the days and weeks afterwards, as more votes came in – nearly all which went to the Democratic candidate.  How on earth could it be that every late vote in every key senate race always went to the Democrat candidate over the Republican?  Moreover, the fact that they have eroded so much of Donald Trump’s popular vote victory is equally alarming: while he is still projected to come out on top, by some estimates the President-elect no longer has the majority of votes (by this count, he still defeated Harris but only by a slim popular vote minority).

This of course is not true — the President won a staggering number of popular votes, likely in the mid-50s if not higher. The fact that Democrats have attempted to undermine it is a travesty for multiple reasons: 1) it undercuts the mandate afforded by Donald Trump’s landslide; 2) it undoubtedly counts noneligible voters, like illegal aliens and deceased citizens to erode that aforementioned mandate; and 3) it leads to more distrust and hostility in our election procedures — and the governments those illegitimate procedures in turn elect.  Rather than lose honorably and accept the result with humility and self-reflection, Democrats are actively working instead to erase Donald Trump’s well-deserved victory – and spite him on the way out.  This adds insult to the many injuries they have inflicted on him, his supporters, and the justice system overall, which they have nearly damaged beyond repair by dragging the President-elect and thousands of his most loyal supporters through bogus criminal charges and indictments, all for the sake of augmenting their own power and keeping the public ignorant of the truth and themselves immune to accountability, these last four years.

The post-election analysis conducted by Capt. Seth Keshel, who wrote several brilliant Substack pieces, further underscores this point about a fraudulent U.S. Census that disproportionately rewarded Democrats to the detriment of Republicans.  Keshel’s analysis is intriguing — and he doesn’t even address the improprieties of illegal aliens being included.  Which makes his findings all the more shocking: putting to one side the issues with illegal aliens, the Census Bureau still downplayed the populations of Republican-voting states, and assigned them fewer electoral votes than they otherwise should have received, unduly rewarding their Democratic-leaning counterparts, such as California and New York, in turn! 

Indeed, by the Census Bureau’s own admission: “The Census Bureau breaks the nation into four geographic regions: Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. See the PES report for more info. We estimated an undercount in the South region (- 1.85%) and estimated an overcount in the Northeast region (+1.71%).” Of the states the Census Bureau lists that were undercounted, and accordingly, received fewer electoral votes than they should have, are Arkansas (6), Florida (30), Illinois (19), Mississippi (6), Tennessee (11), and Texas (40).   Of these states, only Illinois reliably votes for Democratic presidential candidates: the other four, amounting to 93 electoral votes, all voted for Donald Trump this presidential cycle – and have voted for Republicans in most of the recent election cycles reliably. According to Keshel, if these states electoral counts were adjusted to reflect actual populations, it would result in Florida, Tennessee, and Texas each gaining at least 1 electoral vote.  Again, this analysis still takes into account illegal aliens and non-voting residents, which raises a separate set of Equal Protection problems that have significant electoral college ramifications.  Yet, even with that major caveat, Democrats obtain an unfair advantage in the current scheme.

Conversely, of those states listed by the Census Bureau that were overcounted: Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Massachusetts (11), Minnesota (10), New York (28), Ohio (17), Rhode Island (4), and Utah (6) – only two, Ohio and Utah, are consistently Republican states.  The other six states are Democratic strongholds, totaling 60 electoral votes. Thus, the scales were tilted decisively to the Democrats’ favor by rewarding overwhelmingly blue states with more electors, at the expense of Republican-voting states, which received fewer.  Additionally, the Census Bureau counted illegal aliens and other non-voting citizen groups, artificially depressing the voting power of American citizens – and unjustifiably empowering the Democratic coalition – all to the Democratic candidate’s electoral benefit.

By Keshel’s analysis, if the electoral college were properly allocated on the basis of population, Donald Trump would have won 320 electoral college votes and Kamala Harris only 218 (compared with the 312 and 226 that both candidates actually received).  It is obvious that if illegal aliens were excluded, Donald Trump would observe dozens more votes added to that tally – and, downstream of that, a far greater percentage of the total popular vote.

The Sweeping Scope Of Donald Trump’s Electoral Mandate

All of which is to underscore: Donald Trump’s political mandate this cycle is undeniable.  The fact that he still won by such tremendous margins, despite the countless problems with the system, goes to show just how large that mandate really is.  It further reinforces how his administration has every right to demand national election integrity standards from day one.  These standards must include voter ID laws as their top priority – which should verify registered voters not just by state residency, but citizenship.  Meanwhile, non-citizens should be excluded from both voter rolls, and in the U.S. Census.  Since the current scheme includes non-citizens, Donald Trump’s Solicitor General should consider suing, on behalf of all disenfranchised voters, whose votes were diluted by the invidious discriminatory effects of the Census Bureau counting illegal aliens.  This ridiculous scheme, in turn, assigns an outsized share of electoral votes to states that should not otherwise have them – overwhelmingly, deep-blue voting states like California, New York, and Illinois, which house “sanctuary cities” teeming with millions of illegals – at the expense of Republican states, which generally do not.

Democratic voters always screech the principle “one person, one vote” (usually in calls to abolish the Constitutionally prescribed Electoral College) and yet, oddly, look the other way when that same principle is flagrantly violated by inundating the U.S. Census with illegal aliens, which depresses the voter power of every citizen nationwide.  This has a disproportionate impact on citizens in states that typically vote Republican, because they get assigned fewer electoral votes (as well as less representation in Congress) – hence, less overall representation – since the scheme is rigged to favor states with illegal aliens, like California.  This is the antithesis of democracy – and the biggest culprit happens to be the party that claims to be democracy’s greatest protector. 

To help perfect election integrity, President Trump should also mandate that election day be a federal holiday – to ensure all vote processing and counting occurs within a 24-hour time period, and with the exception of extraordinary circumstances, not any longer.  All vote counting should be done by paper ballots, not electronically, a return to the older method that in the past was favorable to expediency and transparency.

The bottom line is that no First World Country – least of all, the United States – should have doubts as to the integrity of its election processes.  So much of the problem with our current election procedures deals with the presence of illegal aliens, which impact our election results – either indirectly, through the U.S. Census, or directly, through appearing illicitly on voter rolls.  This not only undermines faith among American citizens in their elections – and, in turn, the governments established therefrom.  But furthermore, it suppresses the voting power of American citizens as a collective, who are invidiously discriminated against by having their share of the electoral pie artificially diminished.  This raises a serious Equal Protection Clause issue, one that is akin to the Three-Fifths Compromise and the artificial empowerment of Southern slaveholding states in a previous century, which the Fourteenth Amendment was supposed to have rendered impotent. 

Alas, old problems rear their ugly heads and invariably come back in new garb – today’s voter rights issue is every bit as invidious as the voting suppression that occurred in the first half of the nineteenth century and will similarly lead to national distrust and potential disunity if it continues to fester unabated.  Lest we seek to repeat the nineteenth century, let that era’s political woes be a lesson in how we should tackle our election integrity problems today, as well as an omen for the catastrophic consequences that might afflict our country should those problems be left unresolved.

Paul Ingrassia, a graduate of Fordham University and Cornell Law School, is an Attorney; Communications Director of the NCLU; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the NYYR Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly posted on Truth Social by President Trump. Follow Paul on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.